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I understand that high fructose corn syrup was found to have detrimental effects on peoples' health. Why is this so?

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  • $\begingroup$ could you please reference this claim and what makes you think fructose is a contributing factor? $\endgroup$
    – Behzad Rowshanravan
    Aug 15, 2014 at 16:41
  • $\begingroup$ @Bez The OP may not know. I've heard this too, though, that corn syrup is bad for you, and I like the question. $\endgroup$
    – J. Musser
    Aug 15, 2014 at 22:59
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    $\begingroup$ One answer could be: because it's sugar. $\endgroup$
    – Relaxed
    Aug 16, 2014 at 7:45
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    $\begingroup$ High fructose diet cause many bad things: liver and kidney damage (oxidative stress, increased urate levels), insulin resistance (increased triglicerid and free fatty acid levels), atherosclerosis (low NO levels, high urate levels, high salt levels, high LDL/HDL ratio, high blood pressure, etc.), cancer (increased oxidative stress). So you should avoid foods rich in fructose and sucrose except fruits, vegetables and honey, because the polyphenols in them, can counteract with the fructose related problems. $\endgroup$
    – inf3rno
    Jan 30, 2015 at 5:31
  • $\begingroup$ @inf3rno could you provide sources for that please? $\endgroup$
    – user8669
    Jul 30, 2015 at 14:41

3 Answers 3

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Besides a lot of propaganda there is not much evidence that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is more dangerous than normal sugar. Lets have a look at the sugar in detail:

HFCS is produced from corn and is originally a glucose syrup. Since fructose is obviously much sweeter, the glucose is converted enzymatically into fructose (see here for more details). Before the use in food production additional glucose is added to the syrup so that typical syrups contain 55% fructose and 42% glucose or 42% fructose and 53% glucose (the remaining % are water).

If you look at saccharose (which is our ordinary sugar) then this is a disaccherid which is build from one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose. The enzyme sucrase breaks this molecule up into one molecule of fructose and glucose each, so reaching a 50%:50% ratio between the sugars.

As the ratios are more or less the same, it doesn't matter for the human body, where the sugar come from meaning that in this context it is more too much sugar in the food than a problem with HFCS, as also this study suggests:

Fructose itself is not without problems as this induces the production of fats in the liver, but again, it doesn't matter for the body, where this fructose comes from:

For further reading I can also recommend this article on Gizmodo:

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  • $\begingroup$ Clearly whoever named this substance "high fructose" corn syrup, while technically correct (regular corn syrup is almost entirely glucose), didn't understand marketing very well :) $\endgroup$
    – KutuluMike
    Aug 16, 2014 at 0:32
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for your answer. I am not sure I understand that it doesn't matter for the body that the ratios are 'more or less the same'. Any slight difference in structure or composition, can play a vital role in the effect on human health. In this case, however, I think that the way the HFCS is made plays a more important role than the percent composition of fructose and glucose in HFCS. $\endgroup$
    – user8669
    Aug 16, 2014 at 2:40
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    $\begingroup$ @user8669 The problem are the huge amounts of sugar which are consumed. And here fructose causes indeed problems since the glucose is used by all cells for making energy, while the fructose is used by the liver to produce fat and store energy, which promotes obesity when consumed in large amounts. What can also cause problems were contaminations from the production process, but I found sources saying that this problem is gone with todays production process which relies on the use of enzymes and not caustic soda anymore. $\endgroup$
    – Chris ♦
    Aug 16, 2014 at 7:16
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    $\begingroup$ Moreover, fructose uptake is not regulated by insulin. And fructose can bypass a rate limiting regulatory step of glycolysis ( $F$-$1P \rightarrow F$-$1,6 BP$ ). $\endgroup$
    – WYSIWYG
    Aug 16, 2014 at 7:46
  • $\begingroup$ Just to clarify-- is there a difference between fructose in fruits and isolated fructose (such as the type that is converted enzymatically from glucose)? $\endgroup$
    – user8669
    Aug 16, 2014 at 12:34
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The following study abstract of "Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity" copied from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15051594 seems to address your question. I added a paragraph break; the second paragraph seems most relevant to me:

Obesity is a major epidemic, but its causes are still unclear. In this article, we investigate the relation between the intake of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and the development of obesity. We analyzed food consumption patterns by using US Department of Agriculture food consumption tables from 1967 to 2000. The consumption of HFCS increased > 1000% between 1970 and 1990, far exceeding the changes in intake of any other food or food group. HFCS now represents 40% of caloric sweeteners added to foods and beverages and is the sole caloric sweetener in soft drinks in the United States. Our most conservative estimate of the consumption of HFCS indicates a daily average of 132 kcal for all Americans aged > or = 2 y, and the top 20% of consumers of caloric sweeteners ingest 316 kcal from HFCS/d.

The increased use of HFCS in the United States mirrors the rapid increase in obesity. The digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from those of glucose. Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis. In addition, unlike glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin production. Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in the regulation of food intake and body weight, this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy intake and weight gain. Furthermore, calorically sweetened beverages may enhance caloric overconsumption. Thus, the increase in consumption of HFCS has a temporal relation to the epidemic of obesity, and the overconsumption of HFCS in calorically sweetened beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity.

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    $\begingroup$ Welcome to biology.stackexchange. If you cite sources, please mark the citations as those and make sure that you not only write answer which contain only of citations (in this case the abstract). Besides that: The paper shows that the problem is fructose in the food, not the HFCS. $\endgroup$
    – Chris ♦
    Aug 15, 2014 at 21:55
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    $\begingroup$ It is also interesting to read the comments on this article, which can be found here and here. Especially the second is very clear about the Fructose and HFCS. $\endgroup$
    – Chris ♦
    Aug 15, 2014 at 21:59
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    $\begingroup$ I've not read the study but I'm skeptical. During the same period, there was also a huge rise in obesity in the UK but we don't use HFCS. $\endgroup$
    – David Richerby
    Aug 17, 2014 at 9:19
  • $\begingroup$ Ah, but we do use [invert(ed) sugar syrup)[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invert_sugar_syrup] which is a 50/50 glucose/fructose mixture made by hydrolyzing sugar (typically beet or cane sugar in the UK). On the other hand, invert sugar syrup isn't nearly as widely used in the UK as HFCS is in the US. $\endgroup$
    – David Richerby
    Aug 20, 2014 at 9:12
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    $\begingroup$ @ChrisStronks Ah, now I understand. I will see, if I can repost the second link. $\endgroup$
    – Chris ♦
    Jan 31, 2015 at 10:33
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Fructose has a special characteristic that other sugars do not have: its absorption in the human intestine is not regulated, as opposed to glucose, for example.

The important implication is that all the fructose you consume will end inside your organism, either used immediately or stored as fat. Other sugars will only be partly assimilated, or will require more energy to assimilate. If you take the example of glucose again, a glucose molecule requires active transport (meaning consumes ATP, the most basic fuel of your organism) to transit across the intestinal wall. Fructose is absorbed via free transport (i.e. no ATP consumption).

This claim can be verified by opening any human physiology book, and while it is debatable whether fructose itself is deleterious, increasing the sugar amount in an already sugar-saturated environment clearly does not seem a good idea to me.

I (inf3rno) appended the answer with further details:

Sucrose is split by digestive enzymes (sucrase, glycoside hydrolase) in the small intestine into fructose and glucose (1:1 ratio). By the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS hereafter) the fructose - glucose ratio is dependent on the HFCS type according to wikipedia. For example HFCS90 has 90% fructose, while HFCS42 has only 42% fructose (the rest is glucose).

Glucose is mainly transported by SGLT1 (active transport, which involves ATP), while fructose is mainly transported by GLUT5 (passive transport, does not involve ATP) into enterocytes in the intestines. After that the cells transport these sugars with GLUT2 (passive transport, not insulin dependent) into the blood. Fructose and glucose is transported to the liver (hepatocytes) from the blood, with GLUT2.

In the liver fructose is more dangerous than glucose, because it is transformed without any regulation. It uses the same pathways as glucose and mostly fatty acids are created from it, which increase the blood VLDL, LDL, FFA level and cause insulin resistance. The byproducts are urate and free radicals, which cause hyperuricaemia and oxidative stress. Hyperuricaemia cause decreased NO levels (by counteracting with eNOS and reacting with NO directly), which cause increased blood pressure due to vasoconstriction. Hyperuricaemia damages the liver and the kidney too. Too high urate levels enhance LDL oxidation as well, which cause atherosclerosis. The free radicals deplete the antioxidants of the body and probably cause cancer in long term.

@Chris: So summed up I think this is enough proof that HFCS with higher fructose - glucose ratio, than sucrose have a higher health risk.

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    $\begingroup$ It would be great if you added references to your response! $\endgroup$
    – Behzad Rowshanravan
    Aug 17, 2014 at 21:45
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for your answer. I cannot understand, then, how it is healthy to eat fruits (which contain fructose). hi fructose in fruits absorbed differently by the body than other types of fructose? $\endgroup$
    – user8669
    Aug 18, 2014 at 11:07
  • $\begingroup$ @user8669 Where did you get the idea it was so healthy to eat fruits? ;-) No, the fructose in fruits is in no way different, and gets absorbed in the same way. In the wild, it used to be the best sugar-concentrated food around, which is most likely why its absorption is less regulated. However, diabetics for example are required to limit their intake of fruits to avoid hyperglycemia. So its a question of amount, and pure sugar used to be quite rare in the wild. $\endgroup$
    – Raoul
    Aug 18, 2014 at 11:13
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, but according to your answer it would be better to eat something sweetened with sucrose than to eat naturally sweet fruits which contain fructose. Do I understand you correctly? $\endgroup$
    – user8669
    Aug 18, 2014 at 11:15
  • $\begingroup$ No, fruits are good for you and other sugars are ok too. However, fruits are nowadays good for your health because of all their other components (vitamins, etc.), because we already get high sugar loads from elsewhere (bread, etc.). If you were to limit your sugar intake to that of a wild animal, then fructose would become extremely valuable, while it is not so valuable to the civilized human. $\endgroup$
    – Raoul
    Aug 18, 2014 at 11:19

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